Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Teaching, Learning and Education
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Early Childhood English Learning in the City of Qom
Ameneh Taghvaei, Morteza Namazi
ABSTRACT:
Early childhood education is a branch of education theory which aims to provide children with strategies that help them develop the emotional, social and cognitive skills needed to become lifelong learners. The Iranian curriculum has English only from grade 7 which is too late for students to start a new language. Moreover, it has some problems and shortcomings such as: accepting old and ineffective goals and approach; focusing on sub-skills instead of fundamental skills like listening, speaking, writing and reading. Therefore, families send their children to language institutes to learn English at the age of 5 or 6 which has its own cons and difficulties. In this paper I have evaluated the outcome of such language institutes in teaching English to kindergarten students in the city of Qom. I have also compared the outcome of such institutes to the outcome of the only English curriculum school in the city which is Savior International School. The school has classes in English from kindergarten to high school with English being the main language. Teachers of the school are both Iranian as well as Native English-speaking teachers from all around the world who have come for Islamic Studies in the city of Qom. The results show that English based curriculum schools such as Savior School have better results for children in learning English properly compared to language institutes which do not have a proper curriculum, neither professional English-speaking teachers.
keywords: English, kindergarten, language, Qom, teaching.